AT A LOSS FOR WORDS

I’m a writer. I pride myself in the precision of word choice and the way I phrase things to represent my voice. Basically, words matter.

 

I’m also a sixty-year-old. I pride myself in looking younger and fitter than the average guy my age. Still, I get called “sir” more than I’d like, age spots are popping up on my body and there are plenty of other indignities.

 

One of the indignities intersects with my identity as a writer. In recent months, I’ve sometimes struggled with word choice. I sit in front of my laptop, cursor blinking, waiting, waiting…

 

It’s not that I’m searching my brain for a five-syllable word for nice or a metaphor to represent the lingering ache in my legs after a once run-of-the-mill hike. Instead, I’m grasping for something ordinary, a basic term I’ve known since I was four. The word hovers but fails to land. It’s there, tip of the tongue, back of my mind, perhaps slumbering somewhere in my pinky finger. It refuses to appear in a useful part of my brain so I can type it and quiet that dang blinking cursor for a moment or two.

 

While at Evan’s Colorado cabin, I’d gone to a café to write and he texted to see if I could buy some garden pruners, itself a challenging task in a place that was a village at most. I stopped into the convenience store, hoping pruners might share a shelf with bean dip, Doritos and Super Soakers. 

 

No luck. (No surprise.)

 

I asked if there was a…a…a…something or other nearby. The term escaped me. 

 

“Is there a…?

 

“A…”

 

My face reddened. My armpits activated. What was the name for a store that carries lots of varied items for gardens and home improvement? They sell mirrors, rope, kitchen tiles, peat moss and, yes, pruners.

 

My brain failed to cough up anything. It was on sleep mode. It’s not fun when my thinking organ decides to play a practical joke on myself.

 

I finally came up with a vague description instead of the term. “Is there a lumber place with tools nearby?”

 

It worked well enough. The owner gave me directions to a shopping center ten minutes away that included a Home Depot and a Walmart. Yes! I was on my way. Home Depot would definitely have pruners.

 

But, as I drove off, I continued to search my brain for what one might call a lumber place with tools. I knew I’d overemphasized the “lumber” element.  

 

Three minutes into my drive, I abruptly pulled into a parking lot for a garden store. Perfect! I’d support an independent business. Pruners purchased.

 

Still, my brain was not forthcoming with what I’d meant when I asked about a lumber place with tools. I fretted about my aging mind. I went dark. Was this the beginning of early-onset dementia?

 

Too often, a forgetful moment now leads to dementia panic.

 

Halfway back to the cabin, the term came to mind at last. Hardware store! In the empty car, I articulated the question as I’d wanted it to be: “Is there a hardware store nearby?” The dashboard was not impressed. In fact, it was nonresponsive. I was relieved nonetheless.

 

The other day, I had another episode of the mind going blank. An incorrect phrase popped in my head as I wrote a passage—“a fiction of one’s imagination.” This was clearly wrong. Fiction and imagination had too much overlap. There was a redundancy. Fiction was not the right word. Still, the more I tried to recall the correct expression, the more my brain doubled down.

 

A fiction of one’s imagination.

A fiction of one’s imagination.

A fiction of one’s imagination.

 

Stop it, brain. Let me think. 

 

Fiction. Fiction. Fiction.

 

This time, the wait wasn’t as long, but I was plenty frustrated with myself. “A figment of my imagination.” Yes! I was so flustered though, I chose not to use the phrase at all. I didn’t want a reminder of my faulty brain in the passage.

 

Again, I worried. Early-onset dementia?

 

This would be detrimental—no, devastating—to me as a writer. This cannot be happening.

 

There are other instances of word recall malfunctions in the past two weeks. I happen to forget them now. Is that itself a problem?!

 

In a calmer state while writing this blog post and having everything enter my brain and transfer to my Word document in a timely fashion, I am telling myself I have nothing to worry about. It’s normal to sometimes struggle to find the right words. The occasional delay or all-out failure to recall something is not a sign of dementia. When I was thirty, I am sure I stumbled with my words from time to time as well. Why should I descend into dark thinking now that I am sixty?

 

The answer is obvious. Because I am sixty. I’m older. Age spots don’t lie. I must monitor my body and brain. The fact that words, sentences and paragraphs easily spewed from my mind this morning is reassuring. I can put aside doomsday thinking about dementia.

 

Until the next time my brain fails me.

 

 

  

PALM PILOTS

I recently read Gay Bar by Jeremy Atherton Lin (Back Bay Books, 2021) and several of his remarks have left me thinking about how much things have changed. It’s an app world now but do apps deprive us of experiences? Indeed, Lin asks, “Is it enough to have a gay bar in the palm of your hand?”

 

I’m an old fogey. Searching for men on Grindr or some other app feels like using the Sears catalog to pick a package of underwear or, to modernize thinks only slightly, browsing the IKEA catalog for a new living room chair. 

 

In truth, it’s rare that I shop for anything online. I don’t like Amazon. I also don’t like how things are presented, how I can’t try on an article of clothing first. (“You can just send it back,” friends say.) I’m an in-person shopper. I like the experience more. I appreciate seeing things displayed in an actual room. I like the element of surprise, finding and buying something that was not on my list. 

 

Books come to mind more than any other merchandise. I’ll sometimes order from Amazon or, when I’m feeling more righteous, directly from the publisher, when a local bookstore doesn’t carry a particular title. Typically, however, I ask the bookstore owner to order me a copy. I have a long list of BOOKS TO READ on my Notes app on my phone. (That’s an app I love as a writer!) Still, I discover new books in stores and follow instant whims, the new treasure suddenly shinier, the other titles still saved on my reading list. 

 

To be sure, there is a lot I don’t miss about gay bars. I don’t like that the space inherently fosters a drinking culture. I’ve known many gay people my age who have struggled with alcohol. If the problem didn’t start in gay bars, these places certainly didn’t make the addiction any easier to deal with. I also don’t like how I might spot a cute guy only to never establish eye contact. So often, it felt like people looked right through me or past me. 

 

Still, there was the music. I loved how people would rush the dancefloor when the deejay played Madonna’s “Vogue” or when CeCe Peniston sang “Finally.” I could freely dance on my own or drag some or all of my gang onto the floor with me. 

 

That was part of the good stuff. When we went to a gay bar it wasn’t all about picking up a guy. I learned early on the odds were much greater I’d be going home alone. A little attention might be nice but, if not, it was a social night with friends. Dancing, laughing, catching up. If I hadn’t constantly hoped for—i.e., obsessed about—a boyfriend, gay bars would have been the source of even better memories. I met some of my best friends at gay bars or made the shift from acquaintances to good friends. Something about smiling and sweating profusely together while staying on the dancefloor for a fifth song in a row—anything by the Pet Shop Boys—will bond you.

 

Lin’s question again: Is it enough to have a gay bar in the palm of your hand? 

 

Old fogey says no. It doesn’t have to be a gay bar—later I got really into a gay volleyball league—but there’s something special about actual instead of virtual queer spaces. Sure, my answer is part of a more general sentiment: “Get off your phone!” In a real queer space, you can’t curate your experience as much. And that’s a good thing. Just like I find treasures in a bookstore, you come into contact with people whose thumbnail profile pic you’d have passed over. Conversations occur for a range of purposes, not just about whether someone is hookup material or has boyfriend potential. 

 

I should point out that I’m an introvert. If I’d had an app for meeting guys back in the day, I might never have ventured to gay bars. It would have been more convenient. I’d have saved gas. I’d have been spared in-person rejection which is worse than online crickets or ghosting. I know gay bars have changed. They seem to host a lot of drag queen shows that attract straight women. I hear some of my peers complain about this, but gay bars are trying to survive and if serving brunch mimosas to Suzie and her seven besties helps pay the overhead, then bring on the drag brunch! It’s partly because so many gays are hooked on apps that gay bars have a different clientele. We’ve relinquished what was once almost exclusive territory.

 

I may be part of the problem, too. It’s not apps that are keeping me away; it’s age. I’m partnered and well-settled. I don’t need to tell a stranger my coming out story. I don’t need a ten-dollar glass of ice with a few drops of vodka. But, yes, I would still really love to dance! However, even in my heyday at the bars, sixty-year-olds were not the common patron. Gay culture has always had an ageist element. But maybe it’s the same in the general population. Sixty-year-olds aren’t the target club goer where dancing is a prime part of the entertainment.

 

My last venture out was to a gay pub which isn’t quite the same thing. I was there to attend a memorial for a friend whom I’d met thirty years ago at, yes, a gay bar. Good times, sadly all in the past.

 

 

 

  

A MOMENT FOR MATTHEW

It would have been easy to drive straight from Moran, Wyoming, a stopping point between Yellowstone and Grand Teton National Parks, to Denver in a day. Evan and I took turns driving so the nine-hour day wouldn’t have been too much of a stretch, especially with extended hours of summer light. But our journey along Beartooth Highway and through Yellowstone had gotten us in the habit of making frequent stops, to snap pics for social media or, more importantly, to actually savour a moment just for the sake of it being one to share. 

 

Let it take two more days to reach Evan’s home. I wanted more leisurely stops in Grand Teton and we both enjoyed taking in the bougie cowboy vibe in Jackson. More importantly, I knew we’d be passing through Laramie, Wyoming and that was a required stop.

 

In truth, I only knew one thing about Laramie. Prior to our road trip, it was one of only four towns in the state I could name. Laramie will forever be familiar to me as the place where Matthew Shepard was attending university and where he was beaten outside of town on October 6, 1998. He died in hospital on October 12. A stop in Laramie was a must. I wanted to go to his memorial even though I didn’t know for certain that one existed or what it looked like. I just expected one.

 

Thankfully, Google and Google Maps filled in the gaps. On a quiet Sunday morning, Evan and I wound up wandering the impressive campus of the University of Wyoming, first trying a divide-and-conquer strategy for reading plaques on park benches and statues. 

 

Not Matthew. Not Matthew. Not Matthew. 

 

I felt silly and awkward. So focused was I on finding Matthew Shepard’s memorial that I didn’t care in the least about these other people who’d had a bench dedicated to them. No wink, no nod, no calculation for how long they’d lived. 

 

Sorry about that.

 

Evan used his Maps app to get us warm and then warmer. The blue dot on his phone screen took us to a treed lawn on the other side of the building we’d parked in front of. We went from “warmer” to spotting the likeliest spot, a park bench adorned with all sorts of items. As we neared, rainbow stripes came into view. 

 

Once in full view before us, Evan and I marvelled at the collection of items left as part of a makeshift tribute. Multiple paper flags representing different versions of Pride. An oil painting of the rural Wyoming landscape. Bundles of flowers, now dying. A rubber duckie (just because?). A “Say Gay” sticker. A pink unicorn. Candles. Miscellaneous items to represent et cetera.

 

Our visit was on June 22, well into Pride Month so I don’t know if all the decorations were part of marking the larger occasion or if the memorial bench is decorated with items year-round. I choose to believe the latter. I’d like to think there are others who make a point of coming here when life takes them somewhere near Laramie.   

 

While we visited Stonewall Inn in May, the Matthew Shepard memorial may have been more moving, more personally relevant. I was four at the time of the Stonewall uprising. I would have been preoccupied with spying on my sister and her friends playing with dolls (all they had to do was ask me to join) and settling for playing with a collection of animal figurines. I did not hear any news about Stonewall until well over a decade later. But I was thirty-four when Shepard was beaten and left to die. I remember the news. I recall the sadness, the anger, the revulsion. I know his death in Wyoming had a chilling effect on me 2,100 kilometres away in Vancouver. Was I being alarmist and melodramatic thinking something heinous in a small town could happen in progressive Vancouver? Not at all. Two years later, Aaron Webster was beaten to death in Vancouver’s Stanley Park. That only added to fears for my safety. Could I be openly gay anywhere?

 

1998 was a vulnerable year for me. I was becoming more and more open about being gay. For the first and ONLY time in my educational career, I was out to staff. It was not on account of bravery on my part. There were three other gay teachers at the school. Being closeted wasn’t even possible. Oh, how the freedom made for so many laughs during lunch in the staffroom! When I transferred to another school after six years, I went back to being closeted. I told myself I wasn’t hiding anything; rather, I was tired of coming out declarations. I can see now that was bullshit.

 

I can’t adequately explain the fear. It’s an accumulation of life’s experiences: of elementary and high school taunts about being a fag; of my best friend outing me in twelfth grade when I still hadn’t come to terms with sexual identity myself; of fears I’d lose my job teaching in Catholic schools if parents or the nuns found out; of more taunts from carloads of dudes cruising down gay villages because The Gays needed to feel insecure even in their own ghettos; of a total lack of bravado. What happened to Matthew Shepard stoked the fears already within me. 

 

Being gay was unsafe, be it in the form of a certain voice inflection, a limp wrist (both of which were natural mannerisms for me) or when expressed through holding the hand of a boyfriend. Aside from a six-year career blip, being fully out has only been a relatively recent thing. I knew not to dare express myself freely. Twenty-seven years after Matthew Shepard was murdered, I’m letting down my guard, most of that thanks to Evan who has long refused to suppress or edit himself. 

 

I am thankful my visit to the Matthew Shepard memorial was with Evan by my side. We held hands. We hugged. I liked that. I think Matthew would have, too. He’d brought us to the University of Wyoming in a state that, due to lack of familiarity, probably has a lower tolerance for queer identities than the national average. But I’d like to think that, over time, Matthew has come to empower and embolden us. 

 

Like Stonewall. We will not be silenced. To remain more fearful would only be a nod to the people who killed Matthew, instead of a tribute to him.

 

 

 

  

AD APPEAL

I’m not a TV watcher. Not having a television will do that. The old habit is gone. When I check in to a hotel, it doesn’t even occur to me to turn on the flatscreen. Thus, I’m not up to date on all the latest TV commercials. Does that insurance company still use the gecko mascot? What’s the latest McDonald’s jingle? What is the most commonly advertised prescription drug in the U.S. and which side effects sound the worst? 

 

These are not burning questions.

 

Nowadays, my ads are limited to the annoying interruptions on YouTube. I abhor the bank ads. I quickly close the informercial that villainizes bananas. And I will never ever have anything to do with Grammarly due to their overly long ads. (What could they possibly teach me about editing?)  

 

It would be odd to say I miss commercials. Still, I can look back and recall some memorable ones. As a kid, I liked the seasonal Coke commercials that included the song “I’d Like to Teach the World to Sing.” The animated Tang commercials with Martians spark nostalgia. As well, the Wendy’s “Where’s the Beef” commercials with Clara Peller were amusing.  

 

Some commercials caught my eye because of the guy featured in them. A dozen years ago, I blogged about how I crushed on David Naughton when he was the dancing-singing spokesperson in Dr. Pepper’s “Be a Pepper” ads. More than that, I ogled Lucky Vanous in the Diet Coke commercials at least as much as the women who objectified him. 

 

In the late ’80s/early ’90s, another series of commercials proved ogle-worthy due to the models in them. The ads for C & R Clothiers, primarily a men’s suit chain, were must-see worthy. Typically, they featured impossibly hot men, the kind with chiseled faces and bodies that were GQ cover-worthy (before the magazine went with celebrities). As the song “What a Difference a Day Makes” played, a model would be featured first in a work uniform or casual attire looking sumptuous enough. Then, he’d don a suit, supposedly looking hotter as a well-dressed man. 

 

The ads may have been thirst traps but they didn’t seem to help C & R’s business which went into bankruptcy, then folded as some stores were taken over by Men’s Wearhouse. How could the ads have not led men to go into a suit-buying frenzy? How could C & R have not overtaken Brooks Brothers? 

 

I would posit that C & R had the wrong target audience. Sure, gay men like me took notice when the commercial aired but the ad would have otherwise appealed to women. A hot man like Lucky Vanous might boost diet soda sales as women are more prone (and pressured) to try diet products, but the homoerotic suit dudes may have, in fact, turned men away from C & R. I suspect that another problem was that the models looked equally hot in the “before” (non-suited) image. Hot “before,” then hot “after” shots just meant the featured dude was a hot guy. A guy watching at home in an undershirt, boxers and flip flops would have enough sense to know that wearing a suit would have inherent limitations in improving his appearance. While ZZ Top might be right that “every girl’s crazy ’bout a sharp dressed man,” a C & R suit would have no greater impact than a suit from any other men’s store.

 

Alas, the ads are long gone, along with the company. How nice that I can still find them on YouTube… after I close that dang Grammarly ad.

 

 

 

 

THE TENNIS CLOSET

Nothing against Joâo Lucas Reis da Silva but he’s not exactly a household name. As Wimbledon gets underway this week, he is the only active male tennis player to ever come out as gay. Six months ago, Reis da Silva made headlines, The New York Times asserting he was “the first out gay active professional male tennis player.” He’s not in the Wimbledon draw. He did not even compete in the qualification rounds. 

João Lucas Reis da Silva

Based on a quick Google, the twenty-five-year-old has never competed in a Grand Slam (Australian Open, French Open, Wimbledon, U.S. Open) beyond the level for juniors. This week he is tied with his highest ever ranking at Number 250 in the world. Not bad. He’s currently the sixth highest ranked Brazilian player in singles. Still, I wonder where all the professional gay players are in the upper echelon of tennis. Why are they closeted?

 

I don’t watch tennis the way I used to, now that I can quickly check scores on the internet and especially since I no longer own a TV after my flatscreen smashed three years ago. I still glance at scores on a daily basis and follow Canadian players in particular, many of whom are ranked lower than Reis da Silva. I haven’t played in five years after hitting the court with an ex and finding the strain too much on my back and entire lower body. (Very humbling.) Nonetheless, I am familiar enough with tennis to think it is not the sort of sport where a he-man, ultra-masculine straight image is required to withstand locker room harassment and taunts from numbskulls in the stands. I don’t even see coming out as hurting sponsorship deals. Can’t Nike or Wilson tolerate having a gay player wear their brand? I would posit to say there are plenty of gays who enjoy casual play on local tennis courts.

 

So where are all the gay professional tennis players?

 

Daria Kasatkina

Many women have come out as lesbian or bisexual, including Billie Jean King, Martina Navratilova, Amelie Mauresmo and active player Daria Kasatkina (currently Number 18 and previously 8^th in the world). While it’s easier to be a queer woman in sports, I find it hard to believe the taboo is too great in men’s tennis in 2025. 

 

Rafael Nadal

When I was a more avid tennis fan in the 1980s, I often admired the legs of male players but the sport never struck me as requiring loads of muscle. Jimmy Connors and John McEnroe almost seemed scrawny and Petr Korda was wiry at best. Even Ivan Lendl, while fit, did not seem brawny. While Rafael Nadal more recently liked to show off his guns wearing sleeveless shirts, he is known for his biceps, in part, because his body seemed to be the exception. I say all this only to make the point that men’s professional tennis needn’t be caught up in some hetero conception of uber-masculinity. 

 

Bill Tilden

A century ago, Bill Tilden was the number one tennis player, winning three Wimbledon and seven U.S. Open titles. It wasn’t his reputed gayness that was problematic so much as his having sex with minors, for which he was twice arrested and incarcerated after his professional career was over. Despite off-the-court behavior, Tilden is regarded as one of the greatest tennis players of all time. And still, a hundred years after his heyday, Reis da Silva is the only out male player. 

 

I really don’t get it.

 

Stefan Edberg

To be sure, there have been many players I have crushed on but, alas, Stefan Edberg never registered on my gaydar. Same for his compatriot, Anders Järryd. (I’m partial to Swedes.) Fabio Fognini and Grigor Dimitrov are also easy on the eyes. Again, no gaydar signals. I no longer need a gay crush; It would just be nice to know that a few gay men are succeeding on the tennis court and don’t feel their gayness is cause for shunning or shushing. Let them have their boyfriend or husband cheer on-camera in the stands, not as a “hitting partner” or “trainer” but as their current significant other. Let single elite gay tennis pros be able to have a normal life in public. Let them, however quietly, serve as role models and/or at least tennis players who can be as open on social media and in life as their straight competitors.

 

Will somebody else open the closet (or locker) door?

 

 

 

 

  

 

 

A SPECIAL CANADIAN PRIDE

Justin Trudeau, Mark Carney
and that other guy

When Justin Trudeau stepped down as prime minister of Canada, there were concerns. Actually, my concerns began last summer, Trudeau’s popularity fading fast, which tends to happen when a particular party is in power for what some feel is too long. There are always pendulum shifts. 

 

The leader for the Official Opposition, Conservative Pierre Poilievre, smelled opportunity. He’d already been campaigning hard for over a year and kept going on about how Liberal Trudeau should dissolve parliament and call an election. Had Trudeau done so in late summer or sometime during the fall, I’m certain Poilievre would have won. 

 

Poilievre’s campaign consisted of nasty soundbites, lots of criticism, little in terms of his own proposals. Like all Canadians, he was aware of American politics and saw how being Mr. Nasty worked so well for Trump. I was shocked it was working so well in Canada, too.

 

This is not the Canadian way, I kept telling myself. I still believe Poilievre didn’t need to go low as he smelled blood and could almost taste power as prime minister. Trudeau had done what he could as leader and Canadians were tired of him. A rational, positive campaign by the Conservatives would have been just as potent, even if it generated fewer headlines. But Poilievre chose his path. 

 

Everything went wonky once Donald Trump returned to the Oval Office. Right away, he announced tariffs, specifically targeting China, Mexico and Canada.

 

What? Canada?! It felt like an affront to begin his new term by lumping Canada with China, a traditional “enemy” and Mexico, the country from which the bulk of illegal immigrants were entering the U.S. 

 

It’s no secret that Trudeau and Trump have never seen eye-to-eye. With Trudeau still not relinquishing power, Trump’s attack was supposed to bring Trudeau to his knees. But, no. Suddenly, Canadians clearly had someone to hate more than Trudeau.

 

Making matters worse, Trump talked of Canada becoming the 51^st state, an appallingly aggressive and/or belittling way of relating to the country that has traditionally been the United States’ greatest ally. Canadians boycotted travel to the U.S. and American products. While Trump continued to talk tariffs and refer to Canada as the 51^st state, all-things-Trump were reviled by Canadians. 

 

That included Pierre Poilievre’s campaign style, a carbon copy of Trump’s. Suddenly, the shoo-in next Canadian prime minister saw his popularity plummeting. When Trudeau stepped down as prime minister, all the hate for Trudeau had no place to go. Mark Carney became the interim PM with an election pending. Carney was respected, knowledgeable and, if a tad overly confident/arrogant, he was immensely more likable than Poilievre who had never campaigned on likability. 

 

Poilievre was caught off-guard by Trump’s antagonism and the ensuing backlash. Suddenly, his whiny, pit bull persona proved unpopular. The Conservatives never recovered. In fact, so sure they were of ascending to power—all those months of Poilievre calling for an election—they didn’t even release a party platform until the last days of the campaign, after so many Canadians has shown up for advance voting. 

 

In what no one would have predicted in the last half of 2024, the Liberals held onto power and Carney had his position as prime minister affirmed.

 

As a queer person, I am relieved. While some provinces have jumped on anti-gay and anti-trans initiatives that copy Republican-led American states, things remain protected at the federal level. A week ago CBC News ran a story with the headline, “Carney laments Pride ‘backlash’ and rolls out money to make 2SLGBTQ+ parades safer.”

 

Carney is quoted in the article as saying:

One of the strengths of Canada is recognizing that 

people can be who they want to be and love who they 

want to love. The federal government—we are the 

defenders of those rights.

 

Unfortunately, around the world, there’s a backlash

struggling against the progress that has been made. In

this time, Canada will always stand up for the 

vulnerable and the equal rights we cherish. We can 

take pride in how far we’ve come but we should also 

recognize there’s far more to do.

 

Trump’s aggressive, antagonistic tactics toward Canada have allowed the Liberals to hold onto power and keep LGBTQ protections in place, helping extend rights and normalize them with the Canadian public. During Pride month, I’m particularly proud of Carney’s leadership in affirming our equal rights.

  

 

 

GRINDR KILLED THE GAY BAR

In the book Gay Bar: Why We Went Out (Back Bay Books, 2021), author Jeremy Atherton Lin says, “Perhaps the bars were only ever meant to be a transitional phase.”

 

Certainly, that seems to be how it has turned out. The same seems to be the case with gay neighborhoods. Vancouver’s Davie Street and the slightly broader West End aren’t nearly as obviously gay as they were when I moved to the area three decades ago. 

 

Part of the evolution has been on account of queer people feeling more accepted in greater society—although current anti-trans actions are huge setbacks. As the “community” has dispersed, gay bars have a significantly smaller walk-in clientele. Uber provides another responsible option for a night out but it comes at a cost as well. With gayborhoods less apparent, gay bars were bound to take a hit in terms of business. Grinder, however, has gay bars on life support. 

 

Yes, as Lin suggests, we’ve been transitioning away from the bars.

 

For me, I have not been a regular gay bar patron since about 1998. I got in a relationship and both of us considered it a relief to no longer have to go to the bars, getting looked at or, more commonly, being ignored. I saw no reason to be in a cruisy bar when I had a partner. We got dogs and a house (beyond the gayborhood). The focus changed. Domesticity felt so much better than that depressing walk home from a gay bar far too many nights.

 

When I was single again in 2004, I didn’t run back to the bars. Instead, I ran farther. I bought a home for myself and the dogs on B.C.’s Sunshine Coast, a ferry ride away from Vancouver. Any gay connections all but ended. Gaydar did not extend that far.

 

I first saw for myself the decline in gay bars during the summer of 2014 when I spent a month at an Airbnb in West Hollywood. I went out one night with my former Santa Monica roommate and his husband, first grabbing a drink at The Palm in Beverly Hills, then heading to a gay bar, The Abbey, in WeHo. 

 

As I sipped my Tom Collins—too much ice, as always—I looked around to see if anyone was looking my way. It was a clearer than ever no. Having been out of the scene for so long, the difference in gay bar culture in sixteen years was striking. The fact no one was checking me out was same old, same old. But no one was checking out anyone. The people who weren’t talking to friends had their heads down, all of them looking at the palm of their hand—or, more specifically, the phone in the palm of their hand. Even my monogamous(?) married couple friends would look down at their phones. 

 

“What is going on?” I asked as the naïve, out-of-touch person I was. 

 

But my friends were preoccupied. Someone was 250 feet away. Someone else, 300.

 

When they finally explained that they were identifying people as gay with the Grindr app, I thought I was stating the obvious: “But it’s a gay bar.” Why should anyone need a phone to do the communicating? We were all right there. (Some of us without the dang app.) 

 

In time, the reverse of what I thought would happen occurred. People didn’t quit Grindr when they were in gay bars; rather, they quit gay bars. Who needed them when you could Grind at home… or in a restaurant… or wherever the hell you were at any given moment. No more faulty gaydar. The gays in your area—the ones who had the sense to download Grindr—could be tracked based on distance and private photos. Hot… hotter… HOTTER! 

 

It all left me cold.

 

When Jeremy Atherton Lin wrote, “Perhaps the bars were only ever meant to be a transitional phase,” I’d hoped the next phase might be something else. We’d come out of dark spaces with booze spilled on the floors. We could socialize in the open. Queer Meetups, maybe. Connecting based on common (non-sexual) interests. Zoom chat rooms perhaps—a singles social. Better yet, speed dating at the library. Maybe with the decline of bars, alcohol would be less of a problem in the community and we’d meet like other people do at park potlucks, softball games, arts performances. We’d remember each other’s names. We’d have conversations. We’d connect… or realize we didn’t. Real experiences IRL.

 

Alas, no. Like the gay bar, I too have been phased out. Person-to-person meet-and-greets? WHAT?! Too old-fashioned. 

 

Everything now fits in the palm of one’s hand. Our phones own us. Is this progress?